Down River

by John Hart

  “No one’s forgotten, you know. Even without a conviction, people remember.”

  I tried to ignore him.

  “We take care of our own,” he said as I opened the screen door and looked back. His finger pointed at me, and his watch gleamed on his doughlike wrist. “That’s what life in this county is all about.”

  “You mean that you take care of your own campaign contributors. Isn’t that right?”

  A deep flush crept up the fat man’s neck. Rathburn was an elitist bigot. If you were rich and white, he was usually the judge you’d want. He’d often come to my father for campaign money, and had always left empty-handed. I had no doubt that his presence here had something to do with the money at stake on the river. He’d have his finger in the pie somewhere.

  I watched him search for words, then squeeze into his car when nothing came to him. He turned in the grass of my father’s lawn, then blew dust up the hill. I waited until he was gone from sight, then closed the door and went inside.

  I stopped in the living room and heard a floorboard squeak upstairs. Janice, I thought, then walked to my father’s book-lined study. The door stood open, and I knocked on the frame out of long habit. I stepped inside. He stood at the desk, back to me, and his weight was on his hands. He’d lowered his head to his chest, and I saw the length of his neck, the sunburned creases there.

  The sight churned up memories of how I’d played under the desk as a child, memories of laughter and love, as if the house had been steeped in it.

  I felt my mother’s hand, as if she was still alive.

  I cleared my throat, saw how his fingers squeezed white against the dark wood. When he turned, I was struck by the redness of his eyes, the pallor of his face. For a long moment we stood like that, and it seemed like a thing unknown to us, a nakedness.

  For that instant his features were fluid, but then they firmed, as if he’d come to some decision. He pushed himself off of the desk and crossed the worn rug. He put his hands on my shoulders and pulled me into a fierce embrace. He was wiry and strong, smelled of the farm and of so many memories. My head spun and I fought to hold the anger that sustained me. I did not return the embrace, and he stepped back, hands still on my shoulders. In his eyes I saw the same raw loss. He let go when we heard a rustle at the door and a startled voice.

  “Oh. I’m sorry.”

  Miriam stood in the doorway. She could look neither of us in the eyes, and I knew that she was embarrassed.

  “What is it, Miriam?”

  “I didn’t know that Adam was here,” she said.

  “Can it wait?” my father asked.

  “Mom wants you,” she said.

  My father blew out a breath of obvious frustration. “Where is she?”

  “In the bedroom.”

  He looked at me. “Don’t go away,” he said.

  After he left, Miriam lingered in the doorway. She’d come to the trial, sat quietly on the front row every day, but I’d seen her only once afterward, the briefest goodbye as I’d thrown what I could into the trunk of my car. I recalled her last words. Where will you go? she’d asked. And I’d said the only thing I could. I honestly don’t know.

  “Hello, Miriam.”

  She raised a hand. “I’m not sure what to say to you.”

  “Don’t say anything, then.”

  She showed me the top of her head. “It’s been hard,” she said.

  “It’s okay.”

  “Is it?”

  Something unknowable moved through her. She’d been unable to look at me during the trial, and had fled the courtroom when the prosecutor mounted the enlarged autopsy photos on an easel for the jury to see. The wound was vividly displayed, the shots taken under bright lights with a high-resolution camera. Three feet tall, the first photo showed hair spiked with blood and dirt, shards of bone and brain matter gone to wax. He’d positioned it for the jury to see, but Miriam sat in the front row, just a few feet away. She’d covered her mouth and run down the center aisle. I always imagined her in the grass beyond the sidewalk, heaving out her insides. It’s where I’d wanted to be. Even my father had been forced to look away. For her, though, it must have been unbearable. They’d known each other for years.

  “It’s okay,” I repeated.

  She nodded, but looked like she might cry. “How long are you here for?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She slipped further into her loose clothing and leaned against the door frame. She still had not met my eyes. “This is weird,” she said.

  “It doesn’t have to be.”

  She was already shaking her head. “It just is.”

  “Miriam—”

  “I gotta go.” And then she was gone, her footsteps a whisper on the bare wood floors of the long hallway. In the silence I heard voices from above, an argument, and my stepmother’s escalating voice. When my father returned I saw that his face had hardened. “What did Janice want?” I asked, knowing the answer already.

  “She wanted to know if you’d be joining us for dinner tonight.”

  “Don’t lie to me.”

  He looked up. “You heard?”

  “She wants me out of the house.”

  “This has been difficult for your stepmother.”

  I fought to remain civil. “I would not want to inconvenience her.”

  “This is bullshit,” he said. “Let’s get out of here.”

  He turned for the back of his study and the door leading outside. His hand settled on one of the rifles propped in the corner and the morning sun flooded the room as the door opened under his hand. I followed him out. His truck was parked twenty feet away. He put the rifle on the gun rack. “For those damn dogs,” he said. “Get in.”

  The truck was old, and smelled of dust and straw. He drove slowly, and pointed the truck upriver. We crossed through cornfields and soy, a new planting of loblolly pines, and into the forest proper before he spoke again. “Did you get a chance to speak to Miriam?”

  “She didn’t really want to talk.”

  My father waved a hand, and I saw a quick twist of displeasure on his face. “She’s twitchy.”

  “It was more than that,” I said, and could feel his eyes on me as I stared straight ahead. He turned my way, and when he spoke, it was of the dead boy.

  “He was her friend, Adam.”

  I lost my temper. I couldn’t help it. “You don’t think I know that! You don’t think I remember that!”

  “It’ll work out,” he said weakly.

  “What about you?” I asked. “A pat on the back doesn’t make it all right.”

  He opened his mouth again and then shut it. The truck crested a hill with a view of the house. He pulled to a stop and switched off the ignition. It was quiet.

  “I did what I felt I had to do, son. No one could move forward with you still in the house. Janice was distraught. Jamie and Miriam were affected. I was, too. There were just too many questions.”

  “I can’t give you answers I don’t have. Somebody killed him. I told you that it wasn’t me. That should have been enough.”

  “It wasn’t. Your acquittal didn’t erase what Janice saw.”

  I turned in my seat and studied the man. “Are we going to start this again?”

  “No, son. We’re not.” I looked at the floor, at the straw and the mud and the tattered, dead leaves. “I miss your mother,” he finally said.

  “Me, too.”

  We sat through a long silence as the sun streamed in. “I understand, you know.”

  “What?”

  He paused. “How much you lost when she died.”

  “Don’t,” I said.

  More wordless time, most of it thick with memories of her and of how good we three had been.

  “There must have been some part of you that thought I was capable of murder,” I said.

  He scrubbed both hands over his face, ground at his eyes with the callused palms. There was dirt under his fingernails, and truth all over him when he spoke. “Yo
u were never the same after she died. Before that, you were such a sweet boy. God, you were perfect, a pure joy. After she died, though, you changed, grew dark and distrusting. Resentful. Distant. I thought you’d come out of it with time. But you started fighting in school. Arguing with teachers. You were angry all the time. It was like a goddamn cancer. Like it just ate all that sweetness away.”

  He palmed his face again; hard skin rasped over the creases. “I thought you’d work it out. I guess there was always the chance you’d pop. I just didn’t think it would happen like that. You’d put a car into a tree, get seriously hurt in a fight maybe. When that boy was killed, it never occurred to me that you might be responsible. But Janice swore that she saw you.” He sighed. “I thought that maybe you’d finally come undone.”

  “Because of my mother?” I asked, and he did not see the ice in me. He nodded, and something violent thumped in my chest. I’d been falsely accused, tried for murder, and driven out. He was blaming this on my mother’s death. “If I was so messed up, why didn’t you get me some help?”

  “You mean like a shrink?”

  “Yeah. Anything.”

  “All a man needs are his feet on the ground. We thought we could get you there. Dolf and me.”

  “And that’s worked out for you, has it?”

  “Don’t you judge me, boy.”

  “Like it worked for Mom?”

  His jaw muscles bulged before he spoke. “Now you need to shut your damn mouth. You’re talking about something way over your head.”

  “Fuck this,” I said, and opened the door to the truck. I walked down the road and heard his door slam behind me.

  “Don’t walk away from me,” he said.

  I felt his hand on my shoulder, and without conscious thought I turned and punched him in the face. He went down in the dirt, and I stood over him. I saw a flash of color, my mother’s last second on this earth, and spoke the thought that had tormented me for the past few years.

  “It was supposed to be you,” I said.

  Blood spread from his nose, down the right side of his mouth. He looked small in the dirt, and I saw the day she did it: the way the gun leapt out of her lifeless hand, how the coffee scalded my fingers when I dropped the cup. But there had been an instant, a flash on her face as the door swung wide. Surprise, I thought. Regret. I used to think it was imagination on my part.

  But not now.

  “We came back to the house,” I said. “We came back from the woods and you went to check on her. She asked you to bring her coffee.”

  “What are you talking about?” He smeared the blood on his face, but made no effort to rise. He didn’t want to hear it, but he knew.

  “The gun was against her head when I opened the door. She wanted you to see her die.”

  My father’s face went white.

  “Not me,” I said.

  I turned to walk away.

  And I knew that he would let me go.

  CHAPTER 12

  I left the road and went back to Dolf’s house by the trails and footpaths I still remembered. The place was empty, so no one saw how I slumped in the corner, how I almost broke. No one saw how I fought to pull myself together and no one saw me throw my stuff in the car; but Dolf pulled up as I was leaving, and I stopped out of respect for his raised hand and because of the blunt dismay in his face as he read my intentions through our open windows.

  He climbed out of the truck and put his hands on the roof of my car. He leaned in close and I saw him take in the bag on the backseat. His eyes lingered on my face before he spoke.

  “This is not the way, Adam. Whatever he said to you, running now is not the answer.”

  But he was wrong; nothing had changed. Distrust was everywhere and my choices still came down to grief or anger. Next to that, the numbness sounded pretty good.

  “It’s been great to see you, Dolf. But it’s not going to work. Tell Grace that I love her.” I pulled away and saw him standing in the drive, watching me go. He raised a hand and said something but I missed it. It didn’t matter. Robin had turned on me. My father was lost.

  It was done.

  Over.

  I followed the narrow roads back to the river, to the bridge that spanned the border of Rowan County. I parked where I had parked before and I walked to the water’s edge. The jugs were still there, and I thought of the lost boy my father pined for, of a time when nothing was more complicated than keeping a scabbard oiled or taking a catfish off the line. I wondered if there was any of that boy left in me, or had the cancer, indeed, eaten him all away? I could remember how it felt. One day in particular. I was seven, and it would be more than a year before a strange, dark winter bled the heat out of my mother.

  We were at the river.

  We were swimming.

  Do you trust me? she asked.

  Yes.

  Come on, she said.

  We were holding onto the edge of the dock. The sun was high, her smile full of mischief. She had blue eyes with yellow spots that made them look like something on fire. Here we go, she said, then slipped beneath the water. I watched her legs scissor twice, then she was gone beneath the dock.

  I was confused, but then her hand appeared. Squeezing it, I held my breath and let her draw me under the dock. The world went dark, then I rose beside her into the hollow place beneath the boards. It was quiet, green in the way that the forest could be. Light slanted between boards. Her eyes danced, and when light touched them, they flamed. The space was hidden and hushed. I’d been on the dock a hundred times but I’d never been under it. It was like a secret. It was like . . .

  Her eyes crinkled and she put a hand on my face.

  There is such magic in the world, she said.

  And that was it.

  It was like magic.

  I was still pondering this when Dolf’s truck coasted to a stop on the road above me. He moved down the bank like an old man.

  “How’d you know I’d be here?” I asked.

  “I took a chance.” He picked up a handful of stones and started skimming them across the water.

  “If I cross that bridge now, there’s no coming back.”

  “Yep.”

  “That’s why I stopped.”

  He threw another rock. It sank on the second skip.

  “You’re not very good at that,” I said.

  “Arthritis. It’s a bitch.” He threw another one; it sank immediately. “Want to tell me the real reason that you’re here?” he asked, and put another rip in the water. “I’ll do anything I can for you, Adam. Anything I can to help.”

  I picked up four stones. The first one skipped six times. “You have enough on your plate, Dolf.”

  “Maybe I do and maybe I don’t. Doesn’t really matter. The offer stands.”

  I studied the asymmetry of his face. “Danny called me,” I said. “Three weeks ago.”

  “That right?”

  “He said that he needed my help with something. He asked me to come home.”

  Dolf bent for more rocks. “What did you tell him?”

  “I asked him what he wanted, but he wouldn’t get specific. He said that he’d figured out how to fix his life, but needed my help to do it. He wanted me to come home, to talk about it face-to-face.” Dolf waited for me to finish. “I told him I couldn’t do it.”

  “What’d he say?”

  “He got insistent and he got pissed. He said he needed me and that he’d do it for me if the situations were reversed.”

  “But he wouldn’t say what he wanted?”

  “Nope.”

  “You think he wanted you to talk to your father about selling? Try to talk him into it?”

  “Money can fix a lot of problems.”

  Dolf weighed what I’d said. “So, why did you come home?”

  “There were times that Danny could have walked away from me when I was in trouble, but he never did. Not once. When I thought of Danny and me, it was a lot like you and Dad. Tight, you know. Dependable. I felt bad, l
ike I let him down.”

  “Friendships can be difficult.”

  “And they can die.” I shook my head. “I don’t know how I could have been so wrong about him. I keep coming back to the money.” I threw another stone, thought about Grace. “It’s messed up.”

  We fell silent, watched the river.

  “That’s not the only reason I came home.”

  Dolf caught the change in my tone, perked up. “What’s the other reason?”

  I looked down on him. “Can’t you guess?”

  I saw it register. “To make peace with your father.”

  “I’d buried this place, you know. Just moved on as best I could. I had jobs, a few friends. Most days I never thought about this place. I’d trained myself against it. Talking to Danny, though, it got me thinking. Wheels started turning. Memories came back. Dreams. It took a while to get my head straight, but I figured it was probably time.”

  He hitched at his belt and could not look me in the face. “Yet, here you are, throwing stones in the river and debating which way to go. That way.” He pointed north. “Or back home.”

  I shrugged. “What do you think?”

  “I think that you’ve been gone for too long.” I said nothing. “Your dad feels the same, whether he told you so or not.”

  I threw another stone, but did so poorly.

  “What about Grace?” Dolf asked.

  “I can’t leave her now.”

  “I guess it’s really that simple then.”

  “I guess it is.”

  I put the fourth stone in my pocket and left the bridge behind me.

  I followed Dolf back to the farm, then climbed into his truck when he said that he had other things to show me. We drove past the stable, and I saw Robin there along with Grantham. They were in clean clothes, but still looked tired, and I was amazed by their tenacity. They were talking to some of the workers and making notes on spiral binders.

  “That’s not what I want to show you,” Dolf said.

  I watched Robin as we passed. She looked up and saw me. “How long have they been there?”

  “An hour, maybe. They want to speak with everybody.”

  We rolled out of sight. “There’s no interpreter,” I said.

  “Robin speaks Spanish.”